look on my works ye mighty, and despair

The removals company guy came out to look at our office, made interested noises at what we sell, and then went off and called me with an estimate later on. It seemed pretty reasonable and they seem confident and have many delighted testimonials, so we're going with them and we have a date to move: next Wednesday.

I am setting up FFXIV on the PS4. It is... tedious. So much downloading. It's still downloading three hours after I started setting up. I just want to look at the pretty outfits, geez.

I used one white toner last night to not-much-effect (Bleach London, which -- now we've looked -- gets pretty bad reviews in general). Today I used another, to somewhat better effect; my hair has more white/grey tones now, but it's a bit streaky and it's still overall more blonde than white. I might just use a purple shampoo/conditioner for a few days to see if it at least evens out the colour. I have another application of the second toner, so I can use that if the purple shampoo doesn't seem to be having any impact on the blonder sections.

Pez got a package of Japanese sweets from her family, which is a dangerous thing when we're both trying to diet. Whee. They are sitting on the table and we're trying to ignore them.

(And a friend in Japan is being truly fabulous for me; he preordered the recent Ace Attorney stageplay on DVD for me, and has just bought me Masa's new 2016 calendar too. I owe him favours (and money, obviously). I asked another friend -- who has fanclub access -- to help me get Masa's anniversary CD; she didn't see my message at first, and missed the order window herself and is now trying to find ways to get hold of the damned thing. If she can get two, she'll do that. If she can only find one, she'll at least rip it for me. People are wonderful.)

Well, I wasn't going to have much to post about today, but then Pez bought me a PS4 and we traded in the unwanted bundle games to buy a copy of Inquisition for it, so that's new and exciting and means I can play all the DLCs that are only available on PS4 and Xbone. Eee!

(I will finish my current xbox playthrough of Inquisition first; I'm far enough through that I'd like to complete it and once I try the PS4 I suspect the graphical improvements will mean I never go back.)

I also bought bleach and white toner; to hell with it, I fancy trying for white (or platinum or silver, whatever is achievable) hair.

In other news, we should be getting our keys to the new warehouse for Coscraft in the next day or two!

This week I have... relaxed, I guess. It's been a sort of bitty week, but a nice one.

We had class on Tuesday and that went fine; it feels like the teacher is still overestimating how much she can cover in a lesson and is slightly misaiming the actual content, but it also feels like she's getting closer to actually useful lessons. Hmm. We have two more lessons before we go to Japan but I don't think I'll be feeling massively more competent by then somehow.

I played the last two games in the Blackwell series (and they were excellent, but I don't quite have the brain to express more than general approval right now). Pez has been playing Xenoblade Chronicles a lot and seems to be really enjoying it, too. I also fired up Simcity 4, which I don't quite remember buying (my Steam library is out of control) but which I quite... like, with some reservations about how much more it feels like a transportation simulator and how much less it feels like a city simulator.

What else... oh, I got a haircut (today) and booked a colour session for Tuesday, which gives me a few days to work out what colour I actually want. Tumblr suggestions were all in the vivid primary colour range, but I dunno; maybe I'll reel that in a little and go for streaks or a chunk of colour. I don't know! I want to do something to it, anyway.

Tomorrow is Damon Albarn @ The Royal Albert Hall. I'm very excited!

Hair has been successfully shortened with lots of layers and choppiness! Lots of stylist-wrangling needed as always (Pez had the same thing, in the seat next to me: a lot of 'no, really, shorter, honestly'). I, uh, also took the thinning scissors to the back of it myself after we got home, because I am just never quite happy with haircuts other people give me. Photos will probably go on facebook tomorrow; the cut's good but she didn't style it the way I probably will. We had lunch with our friend Chelsea (and her mother and sister) afterwards; so much chicken.

The Steam sale has been taunting me. I don't really need new games, I don't have time to play the ones I own already really. I did snag The Cave and Civilization V despite that, since they were super-temptingly priced, and the sale also reminded me to update my actual Steam wishlist a bit. Edit: ha, and of course what has just come on sale is The Witcher and The Witcher 2, damn you Steam. I'll try and resist.

The heat is sucking all my will-to-do-things out of me. I just want to emulate the cats and sprawl out somewhere. Ugh.

Yesterday was much like Saturday, except we also re-bleached Pez's hair and re-darkened mine. I also struggled with trying to translate the shop-closage notice into various European languages; many thanks again to fourcoffees for making sure that at least the Italian and German make sense. Today we have packed lots of parcels to send out. Our reward for getting them all to the post office in one go was cake and coffee in town, and we also have fancy biscuits to treat ourselves with just because.

We haven't packed yet, so that's the plan for the rest of the day along with general tidying-up and cleaning. Tomorrow morning I have to take our kitty to the cattery (it's okay, she's very happy there) and hope that P4G turns up in the mail before we set off.

The ever-wonderful yuki_scorpio whisked me off to London for a birthday weekend.

We stayed here (which was my birthday surprise and it was amazing; beautiful room, generally awesome service and ENORMOUS bed), but otherwise it was pretty much a weekend of spontaneous let's-go-see-if-we-can-do-this events. Even the weather stayed great!

( What we did: food, movie, shopping, haircut )

Hair: blue
Civ Revolutions: defeated several times
Cake and Pimms: consumed in copious quantities
Lazing: achieved, also in copious amounts
Weekend: successful!

Okay, finally sorting out my Dreamwidth account (storme, startlingly enough).

I've added a handful of people whose account names I knew (or could guess) offhand; feel free to add me (or not) if you have an account over there. I don't suspect I'll be posting there much (mostly I just want to be able to follow DW-only accounts more easily), so you may not be missing much if you don't add me.

Also: my hair is now very, *very* black for the first time in about a year. Gyah, it's unnerving to have hair this dark now, even though it's a lot closer to my natural hair colour.

It is the weekend again!

In a couple of hours a friend-and-coworker from Bristol will be coming to stay with us. I think we're heading to a gig in Islington tonight, but I'm sort of fuzzy on the details. I really need to redye my hair (it's, um, sort of an interestingly streaky green/yellow now) but that probably won't happen before our guests leave. Ah well.

I've been rewatching OHSHC on my bus trip (my commute is actually long enough that I was able to rewatch all 26 episodes in one week this way, sigh). It is, if anything, *better* on rewatching. Much approval. The first handful of volumes of the manga are on order from amazon, because I am a nerd.

We have tickets to the Proms on Friday, for the first time ever - huskyscotsman is a big Debussy fan, so he's very happy. I'd actually be interested in the second Prom on Saturday, I think, but of course that's sold out long since. We might go queue for standing tickets on the day; anyone done that before? Any tips beyond 'queue early'?

Right now, the upside:

* My hair is vividly purple-blue.
* I have tea. And green tea cookies.
* Work is remarkably sane.
* I got a payrise!
* I have multiple pending amazon parcels with good stuff in.
* I actually managed not to buy any of the six things I wanted to impulse-buy in HMV today.

On the downside:

* The flat is a hideous mess.
* I also have somewhat blue-stained fingernails.
* I still have not bought new shoes or new jeans.

On the 'what the hell' side:

* We finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Builders were here up until yesterday lunchtime, so now we have a working (and, uhm, loomingly large) fridge, oven and microwave, plus shelves and cabinets. We also have very very pretty floor tiles, plus far better ceiling lights than before.

Everything else is in negotiation--the hob and sink are both pending on the worktop, the cooker hood is delayed, the dishwasher doesn't seem to be hooked up to the electricity, and a few other things here and there are not quite right. Plus we need to paint the walls. The builders said we could start putting our stuff back in the kitchen; I don't forsee us doing that until it's more complete.

Even so, the kitchen feels far more pleasant now than it did before.

We'll put up photos at some point, when huskyscotman digs out his camera cable.

--

Meanwhile, after about a month of not-having-time-to, I managed to find the time to a) get my hair cut and b) dye it black. Huzzah.

Hi. Yes, I'm still here. I'm even still reading my friendlist regularly. Sorry about the lack of commenting or posting of late, but, well, life getting in the way.

Mostly by life I mean work, of course--I'm still enjoying my job but my god it is high-intensity. But I've bored many people by being unable to shut up about work (I really am sorry, and everyone I've been babbling at has been very sweet not to just tell me to shut up about it). So, I will try not to post about it unless something truly spectacular happens.

Anyway, it's been months since I posted. Big things in the past few months: In July huskyscotsman and I went on holiday--France to Switzerland to Italy (via Liechtenstein) to France (via Monaco) in a week. By car. Over the alps. There are photos on Flickr.

We then went up to huskyscotsman's brother's wedding in Scotland in August. It was a very beautiful wedding, everyone seemed to have fun, and I got to buy some incredibly gorgeous red shoes. Goodness all around.

And since then, uh, there's been a lot of TV, because frankly I mostly just want to decompress a little when I get home and so does huskyscotsman. ( A digression about TV shows )

I've also managed to get a haircut for the first time in months. Alas, it is not a very nice cut (too short, and weird at the back) and it was that particular hair salon's second chance, so I won't be going back there. My plan is to go elsewhere this weekend to get some coloured stripes put in to make it a little less meh.

And now there is dinner pending, so I must scurry. I'll try to post again in the near future, honest.

I have black henna.

This is because of veek. This time we're not going to get to henna our hair at the same time, so she'd better provide me with photos of her auburned hair. And if she does, you'll all get to see my gothy black hair when it's done.

Also, veek bought over some Tealuxe Blue Flower Earl Grey tea for me. She rocks like that.

Plus we bought nummy-smelling soap. And veek got Neal's Yard Dairy cheese. And we went to Muji to poke at the pretty shiny stuff and to the Neal's Yard Salad Bar (which seems to be getting more mainstream and expensive, sadly) for lunch.

Days when I get to hang out with veek are *great* days.

I've just got back from the hairdresser, who was incredibly nice. Tea, snip snip, discussions on how to make my hair look like it is not limp and straggly, snip snip, nice haircut.

I liked it so much I have booked an appointment for Tuesday. To have my hair dyed red. As vivid a red as they have.

I guess I was about due for another bout of 'hey my hair bores me COLOUR TIME' anyway.

hair: dark purple.

And tomorrow we go to Aberystwyth, and I get to see my family and friends. Then we go out with my friends for new year.

It will be fun.

Happy new year in advance, everyone.

So, hair colour poll results are in. The result is an overwhelming (okay, unanimous as of right now) vote for black hair with blonde streaks.

Never let it be said I don't live up to my promises.

Hair is currently mostly black, with lighter brown/henna patches which will be the bleached streaks when I get around to bleaching them tomorrow.

Wacky weekend, most of it which huskyscotsman and I spent with veek.

( Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tomorrow )

My best friend got a 2:1 in his CompSci degree! Yay!
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I want to see Battle Royale. Even more so after reading this post.
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The Suburban Jungle is fun. Dover is a cutie. I advise reading it.
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My hair is getting way too blonde. I think I may try dying it back to purple.
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All the clocks in this flat are set to different times. It's kind of fun wandering around having no idea of the actual time.
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I should start transcribing my dreams more often. I have really vivid and detailed dreams like this on a regular basis. Last night's dream is also online now.
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And I need to stop watching Big Brother. Too addictive, considering that all the contestants are narcissistic twits.

Hair now purple. Much better - I don't look quite as ditsy.

In other news, I now have t-shirts. This means I won't boil to death when I go to North Carolina with some ifmud folks in a few weeks. Yay.